Health care debate in the US
August 19, 2009 - 6:46pm
Thought we could use a general thread to talk about how it's going down there when it comes to the health care debate, since there's so much hysteria happening there right now with town hall meetings, and Rethuglican lies about "death panels" and such.
Anyhow, if you feel like it, take a rabble poll on the US health care debate...
After a summer of whipped-up health care hysteria south of the border, we want to know: What has been the most distressing thing about the health care debate in the U.S.?
Tough poll choices. Where's "all of the above" when you need it?
Anyway, the big debate right now among Democrats and progressives is whether the Obama administration is going to sell out and cave on having a public plan. Continual mixed signals from the Obama crew.
I've been following it via CNN and John Stewart.
I think the disturbing thing is that I think this is the showdown at the O.K. Coral for the people vs. Corporate fascism.
There's more at stake than just health care here.
All Canadians need to know who Jane says who are for the people and who are against the people. Because this is all eventually coming to a country North of the USA, near you.
America's True Healthcare Reform Warrior
http://pacificgazette.blogspot.com/2009/08/all-killer-no-filler-americas...
Doesn't look good, and by not creating a public option, it will just give additional ammunition, and help to bring out all the right-wing yahoos in Canada, who want to try and privatize our health care system.
Obama Calls Health Plan a 'Moral Obligation'
"You've heard that there's a government takeover of health care. That's not true," said Mr. Obama, who went on to call other assertions, like a death panel for the elderly, "an extraordinary lie."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/us/politics/20obama.html
Capitalists sure like to lie.
Is Whole Foods unionized?
Whole Foods chief executive wades into US healthcare debate
John Mackey expressed opposition to President Barack Obama's reform initiative
Mackey, who began the company in 1980 with a single store in Texas, said that Americans have no intrinsic right to healthcare, as some liberal backers of Obama's plan purport. He also slagged on the British National Health Service, a favoured punching bag for US opponents of Obama's healthcare overhaul.
"Our Canadian and British employees express their benefit preferences very clearly-they want supplemental health-are dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments," he wrote.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/19/healthcare-whole-foods-debat...
"You've heard that there's a government takeover of health care. That's not true."
Of course, Obama is playing right into the hands of the right. As if there would be anything wrong with a government takeover of health care. But, in fact, even if that were what he was proposing, government would not be taking over "health care," but health insurance. And that's a problem of framing. It should be described as health insurance reform, not health care reform.
Particularly given how susceptible the U.S. public is to the lies being perpetrated by the right. Resulting in the now famous sign held up by one person saying, "keep your government hands off my medicare."
And while the sources are anonymous, all indications are that the administration is prepared to throw progressive Democrats under the bus:
"The White House and Senate Democrats won't buckle to demands from liberals that they revise their health care strategy, officials said today.
The president continues to operate under the belief that liberals will warm to the bill when presented with a goodybag that includes includes an individual mandate, community rating, guaranteed issue, and a minimum required package. There's no chance, really, that a bill WON'T feature these reforms. Quietly, to secure and keep Democrats on board, the White House is going to bargain, providing inducements, like more money for favored projects, etc., in order to secure individual votes.
http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/08/forget_liberals_white_house_senate_double_down_onbipartisanship.php
If the White House can't keep democrats "on board", Josh, there will be nothing for even those 40 or 50 million who have no protection now. Giving them some security would be a victory in such a frightening, unbelievable climate of supreme ignorance, racism and hatred, eh?
Anthony Weiner discusses the Health Care debate on MSNBC's Hardball.
"single payer is the real way to do it"
"The White House and Senate Democratic leaders, seeing little chance of bipartisan support for their health-care overhaul, are considering a strategy shift that would break the legislation into two parts and pass the most expensive provisions solely with Democratic votes.
. . . .
Most legislation in the Senate requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, but certain budget-related measures can pass with 51 votes through a parliamentary maneuver called reconciliation.
In recent days, Democratic leaders have concluded they can pack more of their health overhaul plans under this procedure, congressional aides said. They might even be able to include a public insurance plan to compete with private insurers, a key demand of the party's liberal wing, but that remains uncertain.
Other parts of the Democratic plan would be put to a separate vote in the Senate, including most of the insurance regulations that have been central to Mr. Obama's health-care message."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125072573848144647.htmlI received an invite to listen/watch an online healthcare forum this afternoon that includes Obama. It begins at 2:30 EST with Obama appearing at 2:45.
Not sure if you need to register (I did), but here's the URL.
Too funny!
Probably held up by one of those people who thinks Obama was born in Kenya.
Very interesting to watch Obama talk to his supporters and ground-level organizers to build public opinion on the ground about health insurance reform. He was relaxied, articulate, pretty honest and well focused on the main points of the program. His ability to distill fairly complex ideas and to speak in plain language is quite remarkable. It's too bad the public doesn't get a vote on it.
Joe Bageant, writing from Winchester, Virginia (hill country):
Every day I get letters asking me to weigh in on the healthcare fracas. As if a redneck writer armed with a keyboard, a pack of smokes and all the misinformation and vitriol available on the Internet could contribute anything to the crap storm already in progress. Besides that, my unreasoned but noisy take on this issue is often about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit. None of which has ever stopped me from making a fool of myself in the past. So here goes.
There ain't any healthcare debate going on, Bubba. What is going on are mob negotiations about insurance, and which mob gets the biggest chunk of the dough, be it our taxpayer dough or the geet that isn't in ole Jim's impoverished purse. The hoo-ha is about the insurance racket, not the delivery of healthcare to human beings. It's simply another form of extorting the people regarding a fundamental need -- health.
Unfortunately, the people have been mesmerized by our theater state's purposefully distracting and dramatic media productions for so long they've been mutated toward helplessness. Consequently, they are incapable of asking themselves a simple question: If insurance corporation profits are one third of the cost of healthcare, and all insurance corporations do is deliver our money to healthcare providers for us (or actually, do everything in their power to keep the money for themselves), why do we need insurance companies at all? Answer: Because Wall Street gets a big piece of the action.
(Joe is less certain of the public's understanding of events in his Deer Hunting With Jesus. It made Sarah Palin's entrance on the scene understandable for me. It makes hope for a rational outcome south of the 49th harder to come by.)
Jon Stewart had the woman on last night who is carrying on about the "death plan", he clearly pointed out to her, through reading directly the segment in question, that her reading of the section on living wills was wrong.
But she still tried to say Stewart's reading of it was wrong, in face of the fact it could not have possibly been, given what he just read.
Unfortunately, the folks in the foothills don't watch Stewart. That's liberal fare.
Oh how I love Bernie Sanders:
"Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats, also reiterated his call to pass a bill along party lines if the GOP refuses
to support a government-run insurance option. "While we, of course, want bipartisanship, but if you have the Republicans stonewalling,
stonewalling, stonewalling, if you don`t have one Republican in Congress who is supportive of a public option, then finally, what you
have to say to the Democratic Caucus from the Senate, 'Look, we got 60 votes. Let`s say no to Republican filibusters and let`s come up
with strong legislation.'"
http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0809/Sanders_Town_halls_will_i...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n__w84g5z4gyes, George but Stewart is talking to Dems who might be swayed by the BS
Of course. Obama's going to have grandma killed and her organs given away for free to black welfare queens, don't you know?!
-Slumberjack got to it before I edited it out. My outburst was uncalled for, Doug. It is just too damned brutal, however, and I go bananas
what Obama faces there - and up thisaway he's just seen as a sellout.
Can't take such insensitivity any more I'm afraid. Time to go try my new batch of grape.
At least he appears to be wearing tin foil. You might try and fashion a cone of it for yourself.
Jack. I don't care if that is supposed to be just aping the sounds of the Republican ratsnest.
It is just tooo over the top.
I have deleted it, with apologies for the pointy head . But I was incensed.
Have you anything to add regarding the health care debate in the U.S. or are you just into ratty little vendettas these days?
If you'd take time to note...the scroll bar being useful in that regard, there was an addition up yonder.
George it's not over the top. That's the thing he's not making it up. That 'ratnest' as you describe is saying pretty much exactlty that and way worse if you can imagine. There's a whole line of Obama as Hitler and healthcare like the Nazi's had. There are people out there right now, saying that Obama is going to 'kill grandma' . It's a main talking point around the whole death panel thing. Variations are one of the most common protest sign ' Obama Lies, Grandma Dies' for instance. There's even anti-healthcare reform sites called Kill Grandma or variations in their titles. It's being called the 'Kill Grandma Bill' and organ transplants are in there. Basically as far as I understand the logic that if you subscribe to Obamacare NO organ transplants, though in some arguements poor people can still get them, though heck if I understand how that follows.
As well they are saying pretty similar stuff about 'giving' free stuff, free medical procedures, etc etc to welfare kings and queens, which translated means 'black', hispanic and the horror upon horrors, illegal immigrants.
This has brought home to me as never before the power of the propaganda system. If we're wanting fundamental changes in society, we have to take that into account. I think many people have tended to assume that "working class culture" or "the culture of the oppressed" could somehow withstand this stuff. I now seriously doubt that.
The trend of satirists providing the best coverage of American politics continues:
Congress Deadlocked Over How To Not Provide Healthcare
The Health Insurance Racket is Manufacturing Entertainment Value from Pulling the Plug on Grandma
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/142120/the_health_insurance_racke...
"The slaughter of the innocents by the health care lobby has pretty much extinguished the political usefulness of the word hope. Nobody, especially Obama, uses it now..."
The Obstacles to Real Health Care Reform
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14866
"Obama's Central Asia agenda matches his domestic arrogance against the rights and welfare of millions of Americans. Denying them real health care reform is one of many ways he defiles public interest in deference o the corporate ones he serves.."
Washington, it seems, is still ruled by Reaganism - by an ideology that says government intervention is always bad, and leaving the private sector to its own devices is always good.
Call me naïve, but I actually hoped that the failure of Reaganism in practice would kill it. It turns out, however, to be a zombie doctrine: even though it should be dead, it keeps on coming.
. . . .
"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals," said Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937. "We know now that it is bad economics." And last year we learned that lesson all over again.
Or did we? The astonishing thing about the current political scene is the extent to which nothing has changed.
The debate over the public option has, as I said, been depressing in its inanity. Opponents of the option - not just Republicans, but Democrats like Senator Kent Conrad and Senator Ben Nelson - have offered no coherent arguments against it. Mr. Nelson has warned ominously that if the option were available, Americans would choose it over private insurance - which he treats as a self-evidently bad thing, rather than as what should happen if the government plan was, in fact, better than what private insurers offer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/opinion/24krugman.html?ref=opinionI have been following this whole business on huffpo, and find it utterly depressing and more than a little scary to think that this insanity is going on not that many kilometers from where I post.
Josh, your country has been taken over by the Ferengi. Get up here while you can!
Ha! Well, the insanity's been going on for some time now. Just when you think things can't go any lower, they somehow manage to do so. If only the southeastern quadrant of the country could be sawed off, things might seem a little more sane.
Barney Frank was brilliant here.
I've been watching MSNBC especially Keith and Rachel. I am getting a really bad feeling from how it is playing out. I think we are about to see the Obama "reforms" being so watered down as to be effective but with the Democrats and the the MSM touting them as the best thing since anti-biotics. Then we will see similar legislation introduced to Canada as a way to "fix" our system. We will have the Libs and Cons going yes this is great and the NDP being attacked because if it likes Obama so much then why would they oppose his "reforms."
I hope I am wrong but it looks like a probable scenario.
A race to the bottom in Canada, after paving the way for class-free medicine for a half century? Don't think you understand why Canadians voted Tommy Douglas "the greatest", mate. And even the Canadian Medical Association has elected a president this year who is not a sellout to the private practise boys of the past. Nothing even "possible", let alone "probable" in your scenario.